Growing Brain Cancer in Petri Dishes

Brain tumors are aggressive and deadly cancers, yet it has
been difficult to study them in the laboratory. A new Nature
Methods paperreports a ground-breaking method to grow tumors inside brain
organoids, which are tiny organ-like structures derived from human stem cells
that resemble the architecture of the brain. These tumors develop after
introducing clinically-relevant mutations using genome-editing,
and mimic the onset of brain cancer within the human brain – allowing
researchers to learn about the biology of brain cancer and develop new
therapies.